


Just for a while, my breath will be taken

by Maple_Fay



Series: Tumblr reposts [15]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M, Prompt Reply
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 21:09:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6300514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maple_Fay/pseuds/Maple_Fay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reply to a prompt: "i'm a private detective hired to follow you, but you're endearingly boring and mostly i just like watching you and oops, i sort of find you adorable." Set in the 30s, and heavily influenced by film noir. Title from “I Won’t Tell a Soul (I Love You)” by Andy Kirk, released in1938.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just for a while, my breath will be taken

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lodessa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/gifts).



**_New York, 1938._ **

“Si... C...k Bay...” is all that’s left of the sign over the door to the Silver Clark’s Bayonet, a venue that—Kathryn’s been told—dates back to the days of civil war. She sighs and pushes the door inwards, walking into the bar’s heavy air with more vigor and decisiveness than she feels. Joe, the balding bartender in his customary shirtsleeves, gives her a quick nod that makes her deviate from her chosen path to one of the corner tables and end up at the counter. “News?” she asks, accepting a gentle glass of wine instead of her customary bourbon. Appearances need to be kept up on a busy night, apparently.

“Detective Paris dropped by today,” Joe tells her off the corner of his mouth, seemingly focused on polishing a tall glass, and Kathryn’s heart skip a beat.

“Which one?”

“The _father_ ,” he chastises her gently, pushing a brown manila envelope towards her. “Your  _special friend_ is still missing.”

“He’s _Elaine_ ’s friend, not mine,” she corrects him, not ungently. “What’s this?”

“A dossier of a man who might be in possession of some information on the matter. European resident. Has taken up residence in the new joint—The Chelsea Hotel.”

She freezes, her spine tense and rigid. “German?”

Joe shakes his head, giving her a long, meaningful look. “Romani.”

–

From her—however limited—experience, Kathryn gathers that a dossier is usually much more boring and predictable than the person behind it.

Not this time, it seems.

The man she’s supposed to be following—one Chakotay Kole, former resident of Oradea, Romania, close to the Hungarian border—turns out to be one of the most predictable and easy to follow targets she’s ever been faced with.

He has checked into Chelsea Hotel, where he has breakfast at precisely eight in the morning every day. Reads _The Times_ with his morning tea (perhaps the only irregularity about him: what kind of a person foregoes _coffee_ in the morning?!). Walks the three blocks to his office, always giving a few cents to the beggar on the nearest corner. From what she can tell, he has no regular job, but rather rents out a desk and some workspace, where he works on occasional translating jobs given to him by grubby, red-faced immigrants. He works until lunch hour, then leaves the office and heads out: sometimes his walks take him all the way up to the library, where he pores over books for hours, but more often than not he visits small, obscure art galleries and studies the pieces with raptured attention.

He’s rather adorable in all this—the sort of man any woman would like to coo over, and brush a lock of stray hair off his forehead: after making sure her stocking seams were perfectly straight, that is.

His evenings are nothing if not a further exercise in routine: a simple dinner in an Italian joint on route to the hotel, washed down with a glass of prosecco (he never partakes in hard liquor, never strays into any of the numerous watering holes of the neighborhood). He reads before bed (Kathryn has found that out upon discovering an empty flat on the other side of the road, and breaking into it with a bobby pin—the locksmiths of this city have absolutely no idea how to do their jobs), sitting on the floor and leaning against the bedframe, mussing up his hair which he usually sleeks back with brilliantine. (Kathryn wonders what its texture is like at this time of day.) Always turns the lights off before undressing for bed—a fact she finds equally intriguing and disappointing. All in all: a perfectly normal life.

Which is, it itself, a serious problem. Time passes, and she’s nowhere near finding Tom.

Something needs to be done, and _fast_.

She constructs a plan, she’d approach him in the library, start up a conversation (she figures any dialogue held in a whisper would inspire a feeling of confidentiality and intimacy), maybe sneak a peek into his papers if the circumstances allow. Follow it up with a coffee the next morning, a dinner three days in. She tries not to think too much of what lies beyond that point: it’s not that she doesn’t find him attractive (what woman wouldn’t, with those broad shoulders, dark hair and soft, chocolate eyes?) or that she’s altogether inexperienced (she’s by no means as “liberated” as Elaine, but she _did_ have a fiancé before that dreadful boating accident took him away, and there was a bit of… experimenting), but to get _that_ close to a man only because of a job, an assignment… well, it feels vulgar, no other way of putting it.

Her only hope is to gain enough intelligence before things come to that.

She decides to execute her plan on Monday—new week, plenty of time to follow-up. Naturally, everything falls apart on the Friday before.

She watches in amazement as he storms out of the office mere minutes after entering, clutching a piece of paper in his hand: a telegram, perhaps? She jumps up from the bench she’s been sitting on for the past few weeks and follows him down the busy street, navigating easily  through crowds of passersby. He’s headed back for the hotel, she thinks—and then he surprises her again, taking a sharp right into a whiskey bar. At ten-twenty in the morning.

She follows him, somewhat reluctantly, not sure how she’d explain her presence in such an establishment—and feels one of her heels catch between the bars covering a sewer hole.

She _loves_ this particular pair of shoes, but she _does_ need a solid excuse. _Oh, the sacrifices I make for this job!_ , she muses, and turns her ankle in a sharp circle until she hears a crack.

–

Thankfully, he’s the very first person to notice her as she stumbles through the door, a look of pain and embarrassment on her face. “Are you alright, miss?” he asks gallantly, taking her arm and escorting her to a table in the corner. “Should I call for help?”

He has a nice voice, she decides, his accent raspy and heavy, but the melody behind it soft and trust-inspiring. “Thank you, you’re very kind,” she says, batting her eyelashes at him, “but I’ve only broken my heel and hurt my ankle a bit. I’m sure, in a few minutes—“

“Something for the pain and nerves, then,” he decides, turning to the bartender who’s watching the whole exchange with amusement. “A shot of bourbon?”

She hesitates, playing a girl much more innocent than she actually is—but at least he’s asked for the right drink. “If you think it’ll help…”

She watches him go back to the counter for his own drink—Scotch, neat—and the piece of paper she’d seen in his hand before. She was right: it _is_ a telegram. “I am keeping you from something,” she nods to the document, praying silently that he places it on the tabletop for even a second…

Predictably, the paper ends up in his pocket. “It is not important. I simply hope you aren’t hurt, miss.”

“Kathryn,” she says, sipping from her bourbon glass and making an appropriately disgusted face. (Not all of it is fake: the alcohol in this place is despicable.) “Kathryn Janeway. Thank you for your help, Mr.?…”

“Chakotay Kole,” he takes her hand into a strong grip and shakes it gently; despite having given him her real name, she’s surprised to find him do the same. She would have sworn a man in his situation would rather prefer an alias…

“That’s a very interesting name,” she says, not moving to slip her hand away from his when he doesn’t make a move to release her. “You’re not American, correct? If you don’t mind my asking…”

Another surprise: he doesn’t.

Which is why they find themselves still talking at the table when noon strikes, she on her second glass of bourbon (watered down with soda—what a disappointment), him on his third whiskey, talking animatedly about his hometown and her family (or a version of it she decided to disclose to him, at the very least). He orders two club sandwiches and some coffee that turns to be lukewarm and positively vile. The topic of their conversation turns to music and art, something he knows far more about than she (is this his cover, she wonders?), so Kathryn sits back and listens to the soft cadence of his voice, supplying English words for phrases he doesn’t know and therefore substitutes with French vocabulary. He’s a wonderful storyteller, his eyes gently glassed over from the alcohol, the way he gesticulates as he speaks absolutely captivating. She’s not sure when his hands find their way around hers, but she lets him hold them, and entwines their fingers, feeling the connection between them deepen even as they argue about American politics towards Europe. She’s trying to discern what his views are, to maybe figure out how he could be connected to Tom’s sudden disappearance—this job is sliding further and further away from her—when he suddenly looks up from her face and outside the window.

“It’s late,” he says, sounding mildly confused, and she notices with equal surprise that it’s well into the afternoon, perhaps even as late as half-three. “Can I do anything for you? Take you home?”

She shakes her head, thinking fast about a next step in the plan. At the very least, she should take a look at the message that brought such a sudden end to his routine… “It’s too far away. But if I could get an access to a phone somewhere…” She knows for a fact there’s usually a booth in the back of most bars, but decides to rely on his unfamiliarity with the joints of the city as she plots.

Surely enough, he suggests relocating to his hotel—‘just around the corner’—and using the machine by the reception: which, Kathryn knows for a fact, is permanently broken.

This is how she finds herself up in his room, the knowing, sarcastic look on the porter’s face following her to the lift as she leans on Chakotay’s shoulder for support. He excuses himself and enters the bathroom (still wearing his jacket, where he’d stashed the telegram! Damnation!) as she pretends to make a call and arrange for someone to come pick her up. When he’s out, she’s sitting on the bed—the only piece of furniture suitable for sitting in his cramped room—and the top two buttons of her fairly prim and simple cream blouse have ‘mysteriously’ come undone.

Her figure is nowhere near as curvaceous as that of some girls her age (take Annika, the Swedish acting student living in her building), but from the way his eyes sparkle as the connection between them sizzles, she reckons he doesn’t care.

It’s both a surprise and a relief when he kneels by the bed and removes her shoes, first the damaged one, then the other. His hands travel upwards, slowly, his eyes never leaving hers, and Kathryn’s breath catches in her throat.

He shares his air with her just as nimble fingers release the first garter of her stockings.

–

This is nowhere _near_ the shy experimentation she’d partaken in with Justin. Chakotay touches her like a _man_ , without any hesitation save for crossing a barrier she’s not yet ready to overtake. His touch brands and burns her, making her spine arch and her body follow the lead of his lips, tightening and releasing as he kisses marks on her body she never thought could be kissed. Upon her silent insistence, he allows her to conduct some experiments of her own, tangling his fingers in her red hair and tracing the patterns of freckles on her shoulders as she moves over his body, large and hot and filled with anticipation of her.

He pauses when her sharp intake of breath alarms him of her predicament, and shakes his head as if trying to clear it. “You’re—“ he breathes, as his head falls forward to rests against her neck, lips opened over her clavicle. “This is all happening too fast. We should sto—“

She lifts her legs up over his hips, locks her ankles together and pushes upwards, pulling him in; she _needs_ him now, desperately, all of her previous misgivings long forgotten. Chakotay hisses just as she shakes and sinks her teeth into his shoulder to stop herself from crying out loud. Slowly, the discomfort subsides and turns into yearning, making her body take over and find a pattern, a rhythm, all logic lost between their mingled breaths and the way he keeps on touching her, coiling her up so tightly she cannot help but release and explode like a jack in a box, moments before she feels him, hot, deep inside her.

They stay entangled afterwards, his breathing evening out quickly even as he holds her close—and it is most difficult to slide gently out of his arms, pull her slip over her head and tiptoe to where his jacket lies in heap on the floor, hand sliding into a pocket…

“What are you doing?”

She half-expects to hear a dry sound of a safety on a revolver being cocked back, but there’s none: only Chakotay’s breathing in the half-darkness of the room. Her fingers release the scrap of paper and she turns, surprised to find her cheeks wet with tears. “I wasn’t completely honest with you,” she says quietly, because truly, what is the point of keeping up the lies _now_?

She tells him the whole story—how she’d grown up alongside Owen Paris’ children; how Tom got engaged to her dearest friend; how he taught her some of the quirks of a private eye’s job and got her her first few jobs; how he’s disappeared without a trace, mere weeks after he’d been repeatedly sighted with members of a Romanian anti-German underground organization.

How Chakotay’s arrival in New York coincided with that last fact.

By that point of her story, he’s pulled her back onto bed, under the sheets and into his arms, and is running his fingers through her hair, soothing, forgiving. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, _draga mea_ ,” he says softly, “but I’m not the man you’re looking for. That paper you were just holding—that’s my friend telling me my intended has married another. I know nothing of great politics, nothing of your missing friend. I am but a struggling author, trying to make his way in great big America.” He pauses, his touch stilling. “If you are now sorry for what we’ve done—“

“No,” she assures him, taking his face between her palms as she presses quick, soft kisses to his eyelids, cheeks and lips, “I regret nothing. I am glad… glad it was you.”

He kisses her deeply, but moves away before the fire licking at her insides has had a chance to transform into an inferno. “I am glad, too. And I will do whatever is in my power to help you find your friend. There’s people coming to see me, looking for my services as translator—strange people, ones that may know something…”

“You would have to be very careful,” she warns him, raising herself up to sit astride his lap. “I couldn’t bear to lose you.”

“You will teach me, then,” he proposes, his hands sliding under her slip and moving upwards, taking the sheer silk with them.

“We will teach each other,” she promises, and takes his mouth as hers once more.

**/end**


End file.
